Elastic bands to enhance vehicle following

The vehicle-following principle comes to its limitations when obstacles interfere with the path between the ego-vehicle and the leader vehicle. This work introduces a planning and decision component to generalize vehicle following to situations dealing with non-automated interfering vehicles in mixed traffic. We focus on lateral control for collision avoidance. Previously, this autonomous driving capability was purely based on the vehicle-following principle. To extend this capability to dynamic driving situations, a dynamic path planning component is introduced. Several driving situations are identified that necessitate responses to more than the leader vehicle. We borrow an idea from robotics to solve the problem: treat the path of the leader vehicle as an elastic band that is subjected to repelling forces of obstacles in the surroundings. This elastic band framework offers the necessary features to cover dynamic driving situations. Simulation results show the effectiveness of this approach. Real-world results obtained with our demonstrator validate the simulation results.